Finding Ourselves Older

Sharon Blackie looks to the Wild Woman archetype to lead us across the threshold of midlife

When we’re young, few of us spend much time thinking about our elder decades. But as we hurtle through our thirties and approach the disquieting period we call midlife, many of us will begin to feel as if we’re racing to the edge of a cliff. We’ll already be experiencing profound physical changes, and soon enough we’ll find ourselves beset by a bewildering assortment of alterations to our body’s rhythm and response. We’ll try – and often fail – to come to terms with wrinkles, sagging flesh, fatigue and shifts in sexual desire.